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“A birthday week tea rerun (trearun?). I figured this would pair well both with the chocolate cake and the almond cake in case someone else wanted tea. It was so nice to get to see everyone in the...”
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“Happy Christmas! Today is Christmas with my eldest daughter because she will be in Ireland for Christmas, so we let her open her presents and have her stocking and we are just spending some time...”
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“assuaging my lack of weekend with this lovely tea.... in my other class, studying psychoanalysis, they asked us if 'i have at least one relaxed, easy evening a week to do what i want and go to bed...”
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67 Tasting Notes

A birthday week tea rerun (trearun?). I figured this would pair well both with the chocolate cake and the almond cake in case someone else wanted tea. It was so nice to get to see everyone in the same room for once – we all work very different hours and the building is pretty big. I’m often out and about, too, so there are some people on the staff I adore but don’t get to see more often than once a month or so.

Happy Christmas! Today is Christmas with my eldest daughter because she will be in Ireland for Christmas, so we let her open her presents and have her stocking and we are just spending some time together. In addition, we told her about a puppy that was saved from animal control by the no- kill shelter. She has a broken leg and has pins and wires and screws and a plate and they needed a home for her to recover in, and she really wanted to meet the puppy before she leaves so we picked her up tonight! She is resting in front of the fire with her new toy elephant and has eaten voraciously. Apparently someone forgot to tell the little pup that she is badly injured and must rest. If her leg doesn’t heal properly, it will have to be amputated, so we are praying the fix “takes.” Here she is:

I got to open my gift from my daughter’s fiancé and this was it! I know, I know! What a great guy! We decided to have some after supper tonight as a celebratory cup.

I made it in my new Krups which I positively love and we are using several times a day. The base is sooo smooth, the almond flavor is dominant without being overbearing, and it is sweet and light, even refreshing, on the palate. Good gracious, the French really know how to scent and flavor tea!
This is an elegant cup and I shall enjoy every bit of it!

Even my daughter who does not like black tea is drinking it. She likes it!

What a beautiful lil pup! My boss adopted a dog that was in the same situation, and sadly his leg had to be amputated. The great news is that Grendel is completely fine only having three legs. He is super sweet and even comes to spend the day in the office now and again — he runs everywhere with his three legs and jumps on my lap even! I’m hoping that the setting takes, but even in the worst case scenario, I bet she will rise to the occasion. If only we could all be more like dogs.

I have a little bit of this tea and I’ve been saving it for my Winter Break — just a few more days til ahhhhhhhh!

Puppy is a beauty! My best to her! (And happy holidays to all of you by the way).

I love Pleine Lune! It´s such a staple tea for me. My favorite way to have it (even if I usually like my tea plain) is with honey and a drop of milk – that way is one of the most conforting teas i ever had!

JacquelineM: I am almost holding my breath because this little girl wants to PLAY! She is rather hyper and is supposed to be kept calm with as much movement restriction as possible! And this is how she acts while medicated! Whatever would she be like unmedicated??? :)

assuaging my lack of weekend with this lovely tea…. in my other class, studying psychoanalysis, they asked us if ‘i have at least one relaxed, easy evening a week to do what i want and go to bed early’. must admit i snorted…. and then i may have guffawed. but this tea slows time down for me. makes it feel like my answer could be ‘yes’ for the duration of my cup….

yup. lol…. right up there with my other class saying they expect 6-8 hours a week outside of class. i sit at 24 AVERAGE. the charity hasn’t had anyone tech savvy to run the social media portion. i am waving maniacally at you, looking completely deranged… can you see me? lol.

Have professors forgotten what it’s like to be a student? I know that they have a ridiculously busy schedule themselves. I can’t imagine. But if they really think you’re only spending eight hours on their class per week, outside of class, they are sadly mistaken. And that’s not even “studying” which is what I consider putting in your own extra voluntary time to review stuff or whatever.

just stopped by starbucks which is carrying one of my drop boxes (collecting obsolete but functioning cell phones) they had 30!!!! with the chargers!!! i was expecting…. okay, i don’t know what i was expecting, but really not that. the donation box was crammed full and they another box in the back. HOLYCRAP! let me frame this a tad more: one store, suburban location, less than a week.

mmmm… I received this one in a swap with Ysaurella I am really enjoying this one. I’m not sure if it’s the sample that i received but i’m not getting as much of the cherry notes as others. I really like the smoothness of this tea – the base blends really nicely with the flavours. i really like the spices in this tea. Now that I’ve been sitting with this tea for a bit, the cherry comes out at the end of the sip in the after taste. it lingers in my mouth, blending with the spices in sips that come after.

Thank you so much for this Ysaurella

Preparation

glad you loved it ! I personnaly never get the cherry notes anyway… and the sample is really new as I am obliged to buy a new bag of Pleine lune each month due to my too high consommation of this tea :S Pleine lune is really an almond and honey tea to me with vanilla and behind but very very far I get the fruits (citrus mainly). It may contain some cherry but I wasn’t able to detect it

I strongly suspect the cherry is a steepster myth. Just discussing it with dinosara, because I was surprised she mentioned cherry and google can only find references to pleine lune and cherry in english and in the couple years, since somebody on steepster said it had a cherry note (but did not mention the cloves or honey)

I really think there is no cherry at all. French site says “exotic” fruits, i.e. tropical fruits, but even so surely in the background.

Ysaurella, exotic fruits from theri description in the french site only (and cherry surely never an exotic fruit for a french person right?). Though I the french description also mentions citrus, agrumes, which in retrospect might there be a hint there. They say rare spices (rare? what are rare spices? around clove which makes me feel vindicated, clove indeed.

A Big THANKYOU to Ysaurella for sending me a healthy sample of this fine tea!
I adore this tea!
It is perfectly blended, NO astringency.
I taste notes of cherry, cinnamon, vanilla, almond, spice, and flowers but it is not overly floral and the spices are not taking over the cup!
These notes dance in perfect unison with each other and blend into one delightful cup.
I will be ordering more of this to have in my perma stash.
You can see my full review here: http://sororiteasisters.com/ on the 22nd.
I knew I had to try this tea as soon as I saw the name of it and I am thrilled THRILLED it did not disappoint!

This is a sipdown of the generous sample sent to me by Ysaurella!
It is delicious, & when I place an order someday with Mariage Freres, this will be on it! It is a tasty almond sugar cookie!
Thanks again Ysaurella!

Pleine Lune is MY tea : the one I would keep with me if I was obliged to live on a desert island for years (hoping I could boil some water on the island !)

I love everything in Pleine Lune : the loose leaf full of wonderful petals of flowers (blue & yellow), the amazing smell of almonds of the dry leaf, the quality of the black tea base and the flavours after infusing.

The main flavours are really almond and honey.

To me Pleine lune is an opulent tea.

Pleine Lune is one of the best seller of Mariage Frères, a very popular tea of the Mariage card.

Some people have it with sugar and milk, I don’t. I have it plain because it’s already a very sweet and generous tea.

I drink it every morning when I have time enough (the week end so !) because I refuse to drink it quickly without paying attention enough to it.

I see what you mean…I went this afternoon in a small tea shop near home because wanted to buy Coquelicot Gourmand of Dammann Frères – they didn’t have it…I went out of the shop with 2 other Dammann Frères teas…

This tea is one that I had wanted to try for a while because people always raved about it and said it was a great almond tea. Almond is one of my favorite flavors, so of course I wanted to try it, even with the cherry notes, which I don’t typically care for. Thankfully MissB sent me some!

I tell you that one thing I wasn’t expecting was the spice. I guess I didn’t read the description, or somehow blocked it out? At first I wondered if I had been thinking of the right tea. But yes, I was, and the spices are less prominent in the flavor than they are in the aroma.

First, I have no idea how much water MF recommends for their little muslin sachets, which is what I have. I went for my usual 12oz, but I don’t know if that was proper. I also forgot that I usually steep MF teas at less than boiling to stave off bitterness, although that probably entirely depends on the base tea.

This is without a doubt the smoothest MF tea I’ve ever had. It’s impressively smooth. Not a hint of bitterness, and not too robust for me. It is sweet, even, with a rich lingering almond flavor and light, warm spices. The only thing that is keeping me from rating this into the nineties is the cherry, and that is entirely my personal dislike of cherry flavoring. The subtleness of the cherry and how it meshes with the almond does make it more tasty than most other cherry flavored teas, however. Glad to have tried it.

I kind of wish that MF had a mixed tea box available at Holt Renfrew. 2 bags each of a bunch of different teas. That would have been so awesome. I keep reading tasting notes and regretting I didn’t buy the tea. :)

They hardly ever say the ingredients of their teas, though the trick is they are much more explicit in the french site than in the english language one – and I think in japan they have to explicitly declare ingredients.

I wonder if it is because there is something about cherry and almond that is often associated, so people are interpreting a blend of tropical fruits as cherry because of the association. It is kind of weird how our brains can be suggested a flavor that may or may not be present. I wonder if I would have tasted cherry if I hadn’t read tasting notes before saying that they had tasted cherry?

I was sniffing it just now (though not tasted it), just to see if I could pick up some cherry and to be honest, no. But will try again – like I said with Black Orchid there is a cherry note I never tried.

There might also be a cultural thing. Americans use (artificial I think) cherry flavour a lot more than europeans – I think it is a default flavouring for medication right? (here is strawberry or apricot, eurgh). Cherry coke, cherry candy. In mainland europe cherry flavour is more unusual, I remember how exotic I thought my first cherry coke was (in Sweden, I think). Maybe americans are more used to associating a fruity note with cherry?

I can think of one cherry and almond tea, which is Compagnie Coloniale´s christmas tea, but the cherry is very up-top there and the almond very on the background. But will check, this made me curious, particularly if several people are saying it is there!

Or, if it´s a sample, are you totally sure it is Pleine Lune? Sometimes teas get totally mislabelled accidentally. Pleine Lune is a really pretty black tea, little blue flowers, little bits of almond, the dry leaf smelling mostly of bitter almond, honey and a little bit of cloves….

sorry, realized it was a teabag, and of course their muslim teabags got the tag with the name of the tea – I think 12 oz (300 ml right?) is just right for those teabags. They fill them quite well with 2.5 grams, they can stand to even enough water for two middle-sizeish cups.

Dinosara that’s funny as a drinker of Pleine Lune since ages I never get any cherry note. Next time I’ll go to a MF tea shop I’ll ask if there is cherry in but I need to bet right now I would say no.to me this is more Vanilla (Vanilla is a spice too), cloves, almond and honey blend. I’m happy you found a MF blend you liked :)

In my country we distinguish between the flavour/scent of almond and bitter almond. Bitter almond is not a depreciative, special trees are grown particularly for them (though bitter almonds do show up naturally in every batch). The bitter almond is the one with the strong smell and taste, sometimes you need a little of the bitterness to make the sweet better. Normal, sweet almonds are lovely, their skins usually holding almost all the flavour, but for that almond scent and a bit of bite, usually we need a little bit of bitter almonds to provide that. Nobody wants to have bitter almonds on their own,besides being bitter they are mouth numbing and I think poisonous as well, but they are needed.

All this to say, that bitter almonds are what we usually think of when we think of almond scents, sweet almonds being almost scentless. This tea is, to my taste, strongly scented with bitter almond. With I think some vanilla, cinnamon and coriander in the background, very subtly. The black tea is not wimpish but I got no clue what kind of tea it is, the almond is STRONG. I like it. Particularly with a little bit of milk. But do avoid if you do not like that bitter almond thing (or almonds in general).

PS – just to add, the tea I got does not at all look like the photo here on steepster. No blue (cornflowers?) flowers at all.

Bitter almonds are toxic, a bit – but it is one of those things, they are so bitter and mouthnumbing that anybody is unlikely to eat enough of those for any real damage. Apricot kernels or apple seeds as well – they are also toxic, same compound or something similar and same taste.

But bitter almonds occur naturally in sweet almond trees, one in a hundred or a thousand (something like that) almonds will naturally be bitter. Though it only turns bitter when exposed to humidity, chewing them or something (really). But there are also other kinds of almond tree, which are not the normal sweet almond, which give just bitter almonds.

You usually need some ammount of bitter almonds mixed with sweet almonds for a few recipes – in the south of Portugal for marzipan (or amarguinha liqueur), in Italy for amaretti biscuits.

I went and double checked and Ok I take that back. It has got the cornflowers indeed, though in mine they are pretty faded, and I recognize the almond and the other thingies I can not quite name (Coriander? peel of something?). Cornflowers were just much less blue, oh well, this tea must have oxidized some, I bought by weight from a tea shop. It is still awesome though!

I should write another review, I think I have cracked how to do this, with honey and milk, and I think this is becoming a staple for me.